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Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers vs. UniFi WiFi Access Points

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers

    Score9.2 out of 10
    N/AThe Cisco Catalyst 9800-80 is a modular wireless controller with optional 100 Gigabit Ethernet (G) modular uplinks boasting seamless software updates for large enterprises and campuses, and security with ETA and SD-Access.N/A

    UniFi WiFi Access Points

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AUbiquiti Networks in San Jose provides the UniFi wi-fi access points. The enterprise products support 1,000+ client capacity, long-range 6 GHz performance, and 10 GbE PoE connectivity with native high availability architecture for critical enterprise environments.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersUniFi WiFi Access Points
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersUniFi WiFi Access Points
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersUniFi WiFi Access Points
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Ubiquiti Networks
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    99%
    Would buy again
    97 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    88 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    95 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    71 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    85%
    Implementation went as expected
    77 Answers
    No answers on this topic
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    Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
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    User Ratings
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersUniFi WiFi Access Points
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.7
    (88 ratings)
    9.0
    (39 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    6.4
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (87 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    7.1
    (88 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    6.9
    (6 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersUniFi WiFi Access Points
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    I think any size organization can benefit from them. The smaller "L" models work well for a smaller organization and of course, the same answer for the larger platforms. The failover/redundancy options are quite nice and the unified setup and UI is always nice for consistency.
    Incentivized
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    Ubiquiti Networks
    I love the equipment for small-scale commercial solutions and quality without the price tag. I might not recommend their products for a large organization with multiple locations and servers. However, the GUI interface will allow remote access and setup across the network. I think this is a great solution for small businesses and families or home office solutions, provided there is some IT knowledge for setup and maintenance.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Cisco
    • I think the updates are great. ISSU upgrading code is fantastic. I think the speed with which CAPWAP converges or reconverges, I think the redundancy mechanisms for roaming APs to other controllers is very good. I think overall, getting away from more of a monolithic processor where subprocesses handle what they call the WNCD tasks, I think fundamentally is an improvement in performance.
    • The radioactive tracing, all of the troubleshooting and all of the logging and all of the importing and exporting features for logging and analytics within the controller itself is really, really good compared to the predecessor AireOS.
    Incentivized
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    Ubiquiti Networks
    • Ubiquti WLAN is very easy on setup for fast deployment.
    • The monitoring software is offered at different level. Cloudkey, or just throwing up their free controller on a PC somewhere.
    • It also does a great job of publishing timely updates to firmware, and addressing bug issues.
    • The ease of the interface, without adding a bunch of fluff, makes this literally the best out there in my opinion.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Cisco
    • The only downside I would say is the GUI performance is a little bit slow, even with a newer 9800, performance still lags a bit even compared to the previous generations. So I would like to see that improved. But aside from that, that's really the only issue that we have with it.
    Incentivized
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    Ubiquiti Networks
    • Initial configuration of access points can be rather tricky. Each one I have installed was a complete pain to get setup and connected with the UniFi Controller software. I never worked out what causes me problems, but thankfully once I've stumbled through the correct procedure, it does work completely reliably after that, for years on end.
    • The UniFi Controller software will nag you to share usage data. When offered to opt-in, I choose not to do so, but you'll eventually be nagged again on a future login.
    • Some of the 'tooltips' within the Controller software could be more informative.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    Despite common software and hardware issues this is still the best product on the market for large scale enterprise deployments. Cisco has worked with us extensively to reduce the amount of bugs in every iteration however new bugs are introduced or new incompatibilities always arise with major releases. Thus, while I'm hesitant to recommend the product it's still much better than all the other competitors such as Aruba and Juniper in the WIFi space. There is also extensive integration with DNAC/Catalyst Center and ISE in an SDA deployment. Recently there has been a number of critical issues with the controller software and Cisco has proved themselves to be incapable of timely troubleshooting and diagnosis. This has reduced our confidence in the product and it's current and future stability and maintainability. At it's current state the product is taking up too much of our engineering resources to maintain despite also paying for premium support from Cisco. As such I have reduced by rating as we are likely to look at alternative vendors for our long-term wireless management solution
    Incentivized
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    Ubiquiti Networks
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Cisco
    It's not simple, but this is the result of being very deeply configurable
    Incentivized
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    Ubiquiti Networks
    Ubiquiti makes great Access points at various tiers provided far better coverage and throughput than consumer-grade wireless repeaters and routers. We have not had any performance complaints from guests or from the administration who use the wifi on a daily basis.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    Due to our HA set up we have always managed to access our wireless networks without problems, when issues occur. When we have lost access to the GUI, due to internal network problems, console access is always welcomed and brings with it the normal Cisco CLI syntax. From previous versions of CLI, it is now a lot simpler and reflects other Cisco products, making it easier to troubleshoot and navigate when necessary.
    Incentivized
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    Ubiquiti Networks
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Cisco
    Monitoring is very good Seamless integration with Cisco ISE RRM configuration very easy. It has REST API support IOS-XE is very powerful operation system. Multicasting and mDNS features are really good and very easy to configure. It supports Pyats and Genie so getting constructed data from python script calls very helpful.
    Incentivized
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    Ubiquiti Networks
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    When it's a config issue, TAC is usually useful. If it's some bug and BU needs to be involved, it might take forever.
    Incentivized
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    Ubiquiti Networks
    Ubiquiti support is minimal, which is said to help decrease the cost of the equipment. However, with many reports of emails going directly to the Ubiquiti support line taking days to hear a response, you're better off either engaging with the community forums for help from fellow UniFi users or reaching out to a reseller that has training on the equipment that can assist.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    You need to understand wifi basics
    Incentivized
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    Ubiquiti Networks
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    Ubiquiti WLAN is very much a consumer platform. It is not production ready, it is buggy, it has issues. It is cheaper than Cisco, but you get what you pay for. Aruba doesn't integrate nicely with our existing largely Cisco based networks, so when time came to replace AireOS, the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers came out on top.
    Incentivized
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    Ubiquiti Networks
    Ubiquiti is overall easier to work with. There is no special training needed to accomplish many of the things required with a Cisco product. Since my time is stretched thin, I need something that I can manage without being weighed down by command-line communications. Also, I am able to use my wireless devices to maintain every Ubiquiti device on my network.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Cisco
    There are different vesrions for different requirements, there's HA as well.
    Incentivized
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    Ubiquiti Networks
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • Positive impacts, yeah, is good to have a central location to control all these profiles for different countries and locations. And the drawback, like I said to you really because of the too many integrations that have a dependency on the software version. For example, Cisco ONE for Access have certain software that can run through and then this scatter center need to make sure it's working with the others APS version that is currently working. And we also, the Cisco Catalyst Center also have some kind another version of software that you need to support this controller. So it's like two tier three tiers of the software version that we need to match. Then only it can work.
    Incentivized
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    Ubiquiti Networks
    • Can't say it enough, prices are awesome, so ROI is very high IMHO.
    • Remote cloud management allows me to service more clients at greater distances.
    • Project estimates become much more attractive when you can show the savings vs more expensive solutions.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots